


Knife To Meet You

by Megatraven, mimosaeyes, projectml, soundofez



Series: Project: April Fools 2017 [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: April Fools, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megatraven/pseuds/Megatraven, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/projectml/pseuds/projectml, https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofez/pseuds/soundofez
Summary: College AU and Reverse Crush AU. Ladybug and Chat Noir run a game of Murder in their uni. Marinette plots to take out her target: Adrien Agreste.





	

 

  ****

They met at midnight on the rooftop of the university dorms.

“You excited?” Chat Noir asked, eyes gleaming in the dark.

“Let’s get this Murder started.”

Chat Noir started humming. Ladybug swooned at his voice. “Of course you know English,” she sighed, trying not to melt at how unfairly perfect her partner was.

He laughed at that. “I mean, English is kind of a language lots of kids here learn, LB.”

She grabbed their bag of plastic knives and said, “Yeah, but you speak it so amazingly.”

Under the cover of night she blushed, afraid she’d said too much. But as usual, her crime fighting partner seemed not to notice her crushing on him. “I’m thinking we slip it under their doors,” he mused, reaching forward for the bag and unabashedly brushing her hand in the process.

Her heart stuttered the way it always did in response to casual touches from Chat Noir. “How dramatic.” Then again, drama was the entire point of the thing, so she added, “Make sure the name on the handle is facing down… For the suspense!”

Chat Noir nodded, pulling a knife out of the bag. “First up…. Who has Adrien Agreste?”

Ladybug couldn’t help but smike (half-smile, half-smirk) when she read her own name. “Looks like it’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng who has him.”

Ladybug glanced at him, and the sigh he released at hearing her name made her wonder if he harbored feelings for her, though that may be wishful thinking on her part.

“Did you know she speaks Chinese as well as English and French?” His voice went dreamy as he gazed at her name on the handle. “I’m taking lessons so maybe one day I can actually talk to her.”

“But you speak French and apparently English _just fine_ ,” Ladybug’s voice cracked. “Talk to her!” _Talk to me, Chat Noir!_

His chuckle was stupidly attractive. “Don’t worry,” he said with a smike to match hers. “My time is coming.”

 _What the hell does that mean?_ Ladybug thought. Shaking her head of the thought, she smirked. “Let’s get to these knives now, yeah?”

She slung the bag over her shoulder and darted off across the rooftop. It gave her a little thrill to hear and sense Chat Noir falling into step behind her.

“You’re like a Murder-y Santa Claus!” he yelled gleefully.

It was kind of true. In their dorms, students stayed up late to watch the crack beneath their door, waiting with baited breath for Ladybug and Chat Noir to begin the game they’d all signed up for. When the first butter knife slid beneath the door to Alya’s room, she practically yanked it up to her face to read before the hero on the other side had even let go.

Marinette’s room was next door. Chat Noir stared at the neat, looping cursive on the little whiteboard attached to the door.

“A-are we going to deliver these knives or not?” Ladybug asked with a nervous laugh, jolting her partner out of his thoughts.

“Ah, right,” he said with an equally nervous chuckle. He took one last look at the whiteboard before sliding the knife beneath the door.

Ladybug pulled out the next knife, which had Kim’s name on it. She consulted her list of names and assignments.

“Oh, Alix is going to take him apart,” Chat Noir chuckled, peering over her shoulder. “These pairs are so fortuitous.”

They both heard a triumphant, muffle, “HAH,” come from the other side of the door when Alix received her knife. After each knife had been distributed this way, the heroes shared a fist bump and a “Well done,” before returning to the roof.

“See ya at the end of the game,” Chat said before vaulting off into the night.

Ladybug stared longingly after him for a moment, and then turned to go back to Marinette’s room— her room. She climbed carefully in through the open window, peeled off her mask, and picked up the plastic knife waiting for her.

“Who the heck is Adrien Agreste?” Marinette asked, looking to Tikki for help. When her roommate shrugged and offered no words, Marinette sighed. “Well, whoever he is, guess I’ll be meeting him soon enough.” She spun the knife around before setting it down and preparing herself for bed.

The next morning, the dorm was abuzz with wary residents, peeking out of their rooms before darting from Murder safe-zone to safe-zone. Others had suspiciously butter knife-like bulges in the back of their jeans, and stalked about, not too surreptitiously waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

Marinette plopped herself down for a bowl of cereal in the dining hall and was instantly accosted by a wild-eyed, earnest Alya. “I’m going to die.”

“Good morning, babe. Who are you supposed to be stalking?” Marinette asked, as if she hadn’t written the name on Alya’s knife herself.

“Rose is after me,” Alya hissed, ignoring Marinette’s question as her eyes darted around the room.

“Rose? Wait, how do you know that?” Marinette asked, bewildered.

Alya leaned in, looked around them, and whispered, “It’s always the queer ones.” Marinette wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but she didn’t have to say anything after all. Alya continued, “Also, that girl has never looked at anyone so long, save Juleka.”

Marinette considered this, then shrugged, conceding the point.

“I need to make sure Rose doesn’t get me before I get my target,” Alya confided, lowering her voice still more conspiratorially. With relish she announced, “Chloe Bourgeois!”

“Woooow!” Marinette feigned astonishment. “Isn’t fake-stabbing Chloe, like, your dream?”

While thinking of Chloe, something she couldn’t remember last night struck her - _Adrien Agreste!_

“Wait, I think I have her boyfriend,” Marinette whispered.

Alya gave Marinette a strange look. “Chloe doesn’t have a boyfriend, she’s too stuck-up for that,” the bespectacled girl muttered back.

“Are you sure? Doesn’t she like, constantly fawn over that other rich kid?” Marinette asked.

“I mean, she totally does, but I don’t think they’re dating,” Alya said, unconvinced that Chloe would make time for anything other than herself.

“Oh.” Marinette ruminated, munching on her breakfast. Clearly, she knew next to nothing about her target. Adrien was undeniably popular yet mysterious, rarely eking out time from his busy schedule to appear at the dorm’s social events.

“I don’t even know where I’d find him,” Marinette mumbled.

“I gotchu.” Alya leaned in close and whispered, “I know he does fencing classes in the afternoons.”

Marinette eyed her skeptically. “And you know this how, exactly?”

“Nino. Bumps into him when the guy gets out of ‘em. He also said that he commented on his music, so I guess he got curious about him.“ She looked around conspiratorially before finishing, "Heard that Nino invited him to hear him play in his room, and I’m pretty sure I can get us both an invite too.”

Thoughtfully, Marinette began nodding as a plan of attack took shape in her mind. “We can tag team it,” she suggested, a note of enthusiasm creeping into her voice. “Chat up Adrien, find out about his schedule, and scope out Miss Queen Bee while we’re at it.”

“I would high five you right now if it wouldn’t raise suspicion,” Alya said, conscious of all the wary players in the dining hall.

She pulled through and did indeed get them into Nino’s room that night. Marinette had some trouble finding it thanks to someone’s smart idea to unscrew all the lightbulbs on his floor.

“You took your time,” Alya muttered as she opened Nino’s door to let Marinette in.

“Hey, I’ve never been here before,” Marinette protested, her eyes sliding past her friend to glance at Adrien, her mystery target. She had to look away quickly, though, because his eyes were already fixed on her.

Nino was about to greet them with narrow eyes when everybody’s attention was drawn to Adrien. “I killed Nathanael!” he practically shouted, all the while staring at Mariette.

“Dude,” Nino said, shooting him a look of mostly pity as Marinette and Alya started to laugh.

“That was quick,” Marinette remarked, impressed. The game had only been on for a couple of hours by that point. Clearly she was squaring off against a formidable opponent – even if he didn’t seem very intimidating just then, inexplicably flustered and awkward.

Adrien pushed Nino aside, as he approached Marinette. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, but didn’t say anything other than, “Thanks.”

“Are we allowed to know who your next victim is?”

“No one in this room,” Marinette blurted. “Ah, I mean, truce while we’re here? I’ve been stressing all day, I would really like to relax.”

Adrien and Alya both agreed, but Nino still looked unsure. “Maybe, but I’m not agreeing until we can also agree on hands being in plain sight at all time. I’m not about to die before I get my first kill, and no I’m not going to tell you guys who it is.”

Alya rolled her eyes at her boyfriend’s paranoia. “A truce is a truce, Nino.”

Then, deceptively yet effortlessly casual, she turned to Adrien and asked, “How’d you spare the time to get Nath anyway? You always seem so busy.”

“I was just lucky to get the pounce on him on the way back from practice while he was leaving class,” Adrien said with a small smike.

“Oh… So you must finish class at, what, 5 or 6?” Alya tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“Today’s was actually shorter than usual, usually we’re there until 8,” Adrien shrugged.

“Every day?” Nino looked incredulous.

“Pretty much,” he said nonchalantly.

Marinette hummed and tapped her chin. “How do you find the time to hangout with friends and all?

Adrien shifted as though slightly uncomfortable. “I don’t… really have many friends to hang out with,” he admitted. “Mainly I just meet up with Chloe for lunch – we’ve known each other since we were kids.”

Alya did Marinette the solid of getting Adrien to admit his schedule, so Marinette returned the favor. “Oh! Chloe Bourgeois?”

“Bourgeois, yeah,” Adrien agreed, his tiny smike dancing around his lips once more, though this one looked a little forced.

“Dude, you need more friends,” Nino said bluntly, and then looked surprised at himself.

“She stuck by me at a hard time,” Adrien replied, the words sounding like an old and tired excuse.

“I don’t want to sound rude, but it kind of looks like she’s still sticking to you, and not in a good way,” Marinette stated in a soft voice.

Adrien’s cheeks reddened slightly, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, I just don’t want to… hurt her, I guess.”

A pause developed and lingered for a beat. Nino finally broke the silence, clapping Adrien on the shoulder and declaring, “Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t chill out with some new friends.”

As he went over to his laptop to start up some tunes, Marinette watched her Murder target curiously, wondering why this lonely, kind boy she’d written off as a typical rich kid was so familiar. Marinette scooted closer to this quiet shadow she had often overlooked. “I’m Marinette.”

“We’ve met,” he said with a laugh. “You, uh, probably don’t remember, I mean, we— W-we were at a Gabriel runway, show, competition, thing— Your model slipped, and you ran straight out to see if she was okay, and I… I really a-admired that.”

Marinette knew exactly what moment he was talking about, but she had a feeling that wasn’t why he was familiar. “I know,” she finally said. “But now we can have a proper introduction worthy of what I’m sure will be a great friendship.”

As if to formalise it, she stuck out her hand, and after hesitating only a moment, he shook it. His fingers were warm against her skin. They held the handshake for probably too long, until Nino happened to call over his shoulder, “Hey guys, come check this out!”

With a delighted smile and a wink so fast Marinette would have missed it if she had blinked, Adrien left her side to watch Nino fiddle with a sampler. Adrien’s back was turned toward her and Marinette thought of the knife with his name on it. It wasn’t against the rules of Murder to break the truce they’d verbally made with Nino, but… Marinette would play nice this one time.

—

Marinette squinted across the street at the gym doors, looking for blond hair in the mass of people.

“Hi, Marinette!” a shy, oddly familiar voice says behind her, and she jumped and whirled, her heart racing a mile a minute.

“Adrien!” Marinette exclaimed, pressing one hand to her exploding heart and hastily hiding her Murder knife. “I-I didn’t see you there!”

“Sorry,” he said, giving her a knowing look. “Class let out early, but I saw you heading over here and doubled back to see you.”

The simple honesty of the sentiment stunned her momentarily. Unlike her, Adrien had nothing to hide – he was just being friendly to someone who’d given him the chance to.

Her guilt must have shown on her face, because Adrien cocked his head to one side just then, and with a hint of wary guardedness he asked, “Um… is that okay, or were you… waiting for someone else?”

“Yes,” Marinette answered without waiting a beat. “I didn’t even think you’d be there. What are you doing here, sneaking up behind my back? Looking for your next Murder victim?”

He had the grace to look sheepish. “You caught me,” he admitted. “I, uh, don’t see them though. Do you see the person you were waiting for, or…?” She made a big show of looking around before shaking her head no.

“W-well,” Adrien stuttered, then cleared his throat. “Well, would you like to get some, um, frozen yogurt together then?”

Marinette’s jaw dropped. He seemed so nice and she wouldn’t mind hanging out with Adrien at all again… after she murdered him. “Sure, and maybe we could go to the park after for a walk.”

Adrien blinked, appearing stunned that she’d accepted. Then a genuine smile broke across his face, rendering Marinette breathless.

Not good. She needed to stay focused, and maybe Murder Adrien before she hurt his feelings… if it wasn’t already too late for that.

He cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him and his stupidly cute smile. “So, um, shall we?”

Giving him her best smile, she said, “We shall.”

“咱们走吧,” Adrien repeated her statement in Chinese, cocking his head to one side.

She was too pleasantly surprised to do anything more than follow him off down the street.

At the shop, though, just as they were leaving the counter with their fro-yo, who should walk in but Chloe Bourgeois herself, instantly reminding Marinette of her pact with Alya and her ulterior motive. Marinette didn’t know if Chloe could smell Adrien a mile away or if she was Force bonded with him or something, but it took her five seconds flat to spot them sitting together.

Chloe marched over and took a seat with them, as if she’d been invited. “Adribean, what are you doing here?”

If he was annoyed at Chloe’s interruption, he didn’t show it. “I’m just hanging out with… Marinette.”

Marinette didn’t miss the pause before her name. She opened her mouth to say something, but Chloe beat her to it.

“Why would you bring her here, you never bring me here,” she said, crossing her arms and giving Marinette a once-over.

Adrien shot her an apologetic look and responded, “Chlo, I never invite you here because you’ve told me multiple times that you don’t like frozen yogurt.”

The blonde girl folded her arms over her chest. “If your calories are frozen, they’re just harder to burn later.”

Marinette hid her grin by taking a huge mouthful of froyo – quite pointedly.

Adrien noticed, and shared a knowing look with her as he agreed. “I don’t know enough about the science of calories to argue that, so it must be true.”

Marinette snorted into her yogurt. “互联网永远不会错,” she muttered, and was gratified by the reappearance of Adrien’s smike.

Chloe glared at her. “What did she say?” she demanded.

Looking between both girls, and with his own signature smike on his face, he said, “I have no idea. I haven’t learned that much yet.”

“Hmph.” Chloe seemed to decide to cut her losses, turning to leave. As she stalked off, she called over her shoulder, “Adribean, text me where you want to meet, hm?”

Marinette perked up in her seat, struck with an idea.

“Sure thing, Chlo,” Adrien replied, oblivious to Marinette’s eyes desperately darting up and down and around him for where he kept his phone. When he turned back toward her, she froze, fixing her eyes on him with a very innocent smile.

“Can I borrow your phone?” She blurted. “I wanna give you my number.”

 _Is he blushing?_ she wondered as he passed his device over. Shaking her head as if to rid it of the thought, she offered him a quick ‘thank you’ and went into his contacts searching for Chloe’s name. When she found it, she quickly sent the girl a meeting time and place before deleting her contact and backing out to enter her own. Finally, she shot herself a text and, as she handed the phone back to Adrien, was struck by another idea.

It took a little sleight of hand, but as his phone changed hands, Marinette tilted her arm so that the butter knife she’d hidden up her sleeve slipped forward. The dull blade touched Adrien’s thumb then slid further, landing atop his phone.

The brief clatter sounded like the proverbial penny dropping. Adrien looked down at the knife, and his brow furrowed gently. Marinette’s heart clenched in the awkward silence between them.

“Wow,” he said, trying not to sound disheartened and not quite succeeding, “That was pretty clever.”

“I’m really, really sorry,” Marinette said miserably. He had admired her, she remembered suddenly and guiltily.

“No,” Adrien said with a forced laugh, “No, it’s a game, and I… I mean, I guess I should’ve known.”

Marinette swallowed down a forming lump in her throat. “Should’ve known what?” she asked, feeling guilt over the situation.

“That you were just hanging out with me for the game,” he answered dejectedly.

As if moving with great inertia, he tipped his phone and the knife onto the table, where his cup of frozen yogurt was slowly melting into slush. Marinette watched, gut clenched with dread, as his phone screen lit up. A text message from Chloe: we never meet there O.o

Adrien’s face screwed up into a look of even deeper confusion than when he saw the knife. “Did—Did you—take my _phone_?”

Instead of addressing that, Marinette, the master of distraction, blurted out, “I wasn’t only interested in the game!” At Adrien’s confused look, she continued hastily, “I mean, I might have been when we met the first time, but I really do think you’re a sweet person, and I really would love to be friends, if you… if you still want to.”

Marinette watched, baffled, as a hopeful look spread across Adrien’s face.

Then, glancing back down at his phone, he asked, “Did you accidentally text Chloe, too, or did Alya put you up to that somehow?”

“No, see, we kinda sorta agreed to help each other with our targets, so I just took the opportunity.” Seeing the frown that tugged at the corner of his lips, she quickly added, “But I did really add my number! So you can text or call whenever and we could hang out together or with Alya and Nino!”

“It’s just a game,” Adrien conceded slowly, after some moments’ consideration, “and now that the game’s over for me… I may be able to help you and Alya after all.”

His expression lightened and a twinkle even appeared in his eye as he picked up his phone. He texted Chloe while Marinette texted Alya, and together they laid out the perfect trap.

 _Hopefully perfect_ , Marinette thought to herself while having last minute nerves on her way to the location Chloe agreed to meet him. The hallway was mostly deserted at this time, except for a brief moment where Kim ran across it in nothing but a towel, screaming as Alix chased him.

Marinette couldn’t help but stare after them. Had Alix been on rollerblades?

If so, she’d been going impressively fast for someone skating on carpet.

Making a mental note to compliment Alix on her skills later, she pulled out her phone. She had no new messages from Alya or Adrien, which she assumed was a good sign. Concentrating on quickly shooting off a text of her own, she almost didn’t hear Chloe’s voice coming from down the hall behind her.

“Seems like we keep running into each other today, Marinette,” Chloe said coolly, exaggerating the final ‘t’ sound with a click of the tongue that she somehow managed to make sound supercilious.

Marinette tucked her phone – with all of its incriminating text message history – safely into her back pocket before turning to face the other girl. Chloe’s arms were folded over her chest as she leaned against the wall, and somehow the sight of those perfectly manicured nails and impeccably coiffed hair irked Marinette. Perhaps these negative feelings Chloe spawned were the reason Marinette had subconsciously written off Adrien in the past. Now that she had gotten to know him, she couldn’t wrap her mind around how these two could possibly be so close.

Chloe’s eyes narrowed into a territorial glare as she said, “I’m meeting Adrien now, so don’t even try to butt in. In fact, just stay away from him forever. I don’t know how you got into your head that you have a chance at him, but let me make this very clear: Marinette _Chang_ , you will not have your way.”

“Excuse me?” Marinette asked, astonished and infuriated at how Chloe had somehow managed to ruin a surname as simple as Cheng. “I don’t know what you think you’re getting at, but—”

“I mean that I won’t let you ever hurt him or twist him into something he’s not,” Chloe interrupted with a sneer. “Now, I have a meeting to get to, so you should scurry on back to your own room and leave us alone.”

“And who are you to speak for Adrien?” Marinette demanded. Distantly she wondered if Alya was stuck around the corner, unable to get into position, but right then she didn’t care all too much.

Unexpectedly, Chloe’s unruffled veneer cracked just a little, revealing traces of vulnerability. “I have to, because he hasn’t found how to speak up for himself yet.”

She gave Marinette a challenging look up and down before backing away with a flippant toss of her ponytail. “You wouldn’t understand, you don’t know him.”

Marinette watched her go, somehow feeling both irritated and concerned, enough to consider actually warning Chloe of the trap closing around her. Before she could do more than open her mouth, though, Chloe shrieked in terror.

Marinette strolled around the corner to find, not Alya, but Rose standing triumphantly over Chloe.

“Rose?” Marinette exclaimed, shocked at the new development. “What’re you d—”

“Girl, you did it!” Alya cheered, emerging from wherever she’d been waiting.

Sweet, demure Rose smiled at Marinette, explaining, “I got Alya in the lift on her way up, and she said the show must go on.”

Chloe, who had half-fallen backwards in her surprise, hastily pushed herself off from the wall she’d been leaning against as though she had actually been wounded by the butter knife. “Isn’t ganging up on someone against the rules?” she asked silkily. “How did you two even know I would be here?”

The door to Adrien’s room cracked open a bit further, revealing him standing just a few steps behind the girls with a sheepish look on his face.

Chloe’s face was the picture of betrayal as she whispered, “Et tu?”

“Sorry, Chlo,” Adrien said with an abashed laugh, glancing at Marinette.

Chloe whirled on Marinette, and her expression held enough unbridled hatred that Marinette actually had to take a step back just in case Chloe went crazy.

“ _You_ ,” Chloe hissed, “ _You’re_ the one who did this to him—”

"Actually,” Adrien interrupted, “I, uh, kind of volunteered to help her and Alya out.” He looked down at his shoes a moment before he built up the courage to look his oldest friend in the eye.  "Before you get mad at anyone, I think it’d be good to remember this is just a silly game and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.“

“Easy for you to say,” Chloe sneered, waving a manicured hand as if to encompass all the conspirators against her, “they didn’t get you.”

“No, actually, Marinette got me,” Adrien said, looking at her intently with a level gaze and a tone that seemed a tad too modulated.

Chloe’s eyebrow quirked up and she merely said, “Ah.”

She tossed Marinette a curiously soft, _knowing_ look. “Well, congratulations to all three of you.” She cast one confused side glance to Alya before adding, “And I don’t even know what _you_ got out of this but whatever. Adribean, let’s get out of here.”

Marinette protested, and with a roll of her perfectly mascara’d eyes, Chloe handed her knife to Rose, whose face immediately fell at the name on its handle.

“I’m almost proud of you, beanie-baby,” Chloe said fondly as she and Adrien disappeared into an elevator.

The group watched them leave before Alya and Marinette turned to Rose.

"So, who do ya gotta kill now?” Alya asked cheerfully. When Rose showed them the name on her new knife, they understood why she was now frowning.

The name on the knife was ‘Juleka’.

* * *

Ladybug shivered in the night wind and mentally chastised herself for not suggesting a less dramatic place to meet than the rooftop, again.

Just as she was about to throw in the towel, though, she heard the roof access door creak open, and her masked partner joke, “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.”

He came over to where she had pressed herself flat against the wall for maximum shelter from the elements, removed his jacket, and settled it, still warm, around her shoulders, before handing her a butter knife. The swell of butterflies in her stomach after the first gesture distracted her from the second.

“What… What’s this?” she asked about the knife, a few seconds too delayed.

“Could I ask you to do something for me? One of the players forgot to give his knife to his murderer today and, well… curfew.”

“Of course,” Ladybug said, almost before Chat Noir had finished his sentence, as she stared down at the name she’d written only last weekend on the plastic knife. Then, even though she knew the answer, she asked, “Who’s the murderer?”

“Her name’s Marinette,” he said, almost too quickly.

She quickly put the knife through her bun and said, “Well, I’ll be sure to get it to her, but I think we should go. It’s getting pretty chilly out.“

Chat Noir nodded his assent but didn’t move to leave, even though she did.

“You okay?” he ventured to ask when she was halfway to the door.

Ladybug paused just long enough to deflect the question: “Just— I’ll see you at the end of the game.”

* * *

She didn’t plan to win the game. In past games, she participated for fun, then stepped down and let herself lose once the competition got close to its end. But a suspicion that wouldn’t leave Marinette alone, kept her playing.

It hadn’t been anything that he had said, really, and maybe – no, _probably_ she’s just making it all up in her head, but Chat Noir and Adrien have the same golden hair and the same small smile and the same _wealth_. If there was some other boy rich enough to buy textbooks to donate as Chat Noir, Marinette hadn’t heard of him. Plus, Adrien was more than kind enough to, as Chat Noir, support Ladybug’s morale-boosting, cookie-distributing agenda. Some part of her wanted to justify her Murder of Adrien Agreste, especially if he was Chat Noir – and the only way she could think to do that was by winning.

By this time, she’d gone through several people, and was presently staring at Alix’s name on her knife. She knew she’d see the girl eventually on her own, so when she did she took her opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

"Hey Alix!” she called out, waving to the other girl and walking up to her.

Alix, to her credit, only flinched away slightly. This late into the Murder game, the few remaining players all knew who one another were, and even though Marinette was amiable enough with Alix, the other girl couldn’t help but be wary.

Marinette halted a strategic distance away from Alix - far enough to set her at ease, but close enough that she merely seemed to be positioning herself for an innocuous conversation.

“I just wanted to tell you, I saw you skating after Kim in the hall.”

Alix squinted, clearly needing Marinette to be more specific.

“The day he thought walking around in a towel would keep him safe?”

Alix burst into laughter. Marinette wondered how many times the other girl had skated after Kim in the hall.

“The lunkhead forgot to even drop the stupid towel,” Alix crowed through her fits of laughter.

“Oh my god, seriously?” Marinette laughed. “How do you even forget something like that?”

“I dunno man, but that had to be one of the best moments of my life,” Alix responded, relaxing marginally and letting her guard drop a tiny bit. “Say, I heard you were part of the team effort to nail Chloe. Good on you!”

Alix reached forward to punch Marinette lightly on the arm – the perfect opportunity for her to strike, really, but Alix’s words had reminded her just how pyrrhic their victory had been. Guilt for Chloe, of all people, was the last thing Marinette expected to feel after their group effort to take her down. Some of it was secondhand guilt on Adrien’s behalf… Chloe was his oldest friend, after all. Even though he’d _offered_ to help, Marinette couldn’t help feeling responsible for tossing a wrench in their friendship.

Alix saw the knife, but froze up for just long enough that Marinette managed to brush the plastic blade across Alix’s knuckles.

Alix exploded into self-directed fury immediately. “Are you KIDDING me, that must have been the lamest murder _ever_ ,” she lamented.

Marinette shot her a smike and an apologetic look. “Sorry, Alix, but if it helps any, I really did come over to compliment you. I’ve never seen someone roll across carpet as fast as you did, and I just kinda saw the opportunity to… do both?” she said, gesturing to her knife.

Alix seemed to dither for a moment between anger and letting it go. Ultimately though, her sportsmanship won out, and she merely shrugged, taking out her knife to hand it over.

“You got me fair and square,” she sighed.

Marinette made it to the end of the lines of Murder fair and square. As fair as it could be, considering she was Ladybug. The final challenge for last student left standing was a knife with Chat Noir’s name on it. (Technically it was a choice between Ladybug and Chat Noir, but considering that Marinette was Ladybug, it was hardly a choice at all.)

“Remind me why you’re still playing the game?” Tikki asked one night, after Marinette had groaned that she didn’t want to kill Chat Noir.

“I don’t knowww,” Marinette complained, staring miserably at the Ladybug costume she was supposed to be putting on. “I guess I just… ugh, I think I know who he is and if I’m right then he would deserve to know who I am too, right?”

Tikki gave her a sympathetic look but didn’t answer, instead grabbing Marinette’s costume and holding it out to her. “You’re going to be late if you don’t get ready now, Marinette, and putting it off is only going to make you more unsure about your decisions.”

Marinette smiled hesitantly. “I bet Chat Noir doesn’t have a helpful roommate to help him with all this.”

Tikki’s normally sweet smile looked smug.

She found Chat Noir at their usual meeting spot, on the roof. Ladybug crept up behind her partner and startled him with a hand at the small of his back. He made a small, startled noise and spun to face her.

“You’ve been picked this year,” Ladybug teased. “You need to be more careful if you don’t want to be Murdered.”

Chat Noir laughed as he wryly saidsaid wryly, “You’re not wrong, but she already got me once this round, so I’m not too optimistic about my chances.”

Ladybug’s eyes widened a bit, but she made sure her voice sounded normal before quipping, “Hey, at least you’ve got eight more lives, yeah?”

“‘Bug, I don’t know if you knew this,” he started seriously, “but I’m not actually a cat.” He anticipated the shove to his shoulder and laughed harder.

In hindsight, even she couldn’t tell you why she said it. But as his laughter slowly petered out, she waited until he was looking her in the eyes, then coyly leaned closer and murmured, “That’s too bad. I bet I could make you purr.”

For a moment, Chat’s green eyes went adorably wide and round in a series of stunned blinks. Then his lips broke into an easy smile and he brushed the comment off with a laugh, as he usually did when Ladybug said something flirty.

“There is _something_ you could do to make me _very_ happy….”

Was he taking up her offer for once? She wasn’t ready for this!

“…because my friend really wanted to win the game and meet Ladybug and exchange recipes.”

Ladybug deflated. “Alright,” she sighed, “who’s your friend?”

“Her name’s Chloe Bourgeois and she’s gotta be one of your biggest fans!” he exclaimed, completely unaware of the gears turning in Ladybug’s mind. “She’s tried to bake cookies like yours, do makeup like yours - one time I caught her trying on polka dotted sunglasses like your costume, and she hates patterns…”

Ladybug’s eyes widened at this onslaught of images. Somehow she hadn’t imagined the rich, bratty girl consenting to be anything other than the subject of idolatry. Then her chest clenched with the realization that she had to be right. Chloe didn’t _have_ that many close friends, despite all her “popular girl” pretenses. While Chat Noir went on about all the ways Chloe adored Ladybug, she reached into her pocket for the knife with his name on it.

“Playing the game even though you set it up?” Ladybug teased, leaning her head against Chat Noir’s shoulder and trying not to get distracted by the wispy baby hairs hiding in plain sight along his jaw. She slung her arm around his broad, broad shoulders and brushed the butter knife in that hand along his cheek, just under his mask. “You’re almost as bad as me,” Marinette whispered, and then, because the guilt of Adrien and Chloe was overwhelming, she added, “I’m really, really sorry, Adrien.”

Adrien barely heard the apology, his focus caught on the knife and the hand that had murdered him not once now, but twice. His mind tried to process it, tried to merge together his images of Marinette and Ladybug, and while that was a surprisingly easy task, thinking of all the things Ladybug said to _him_ made his face turn red.

At the concern and guilt on her face when he turned to her, he attempted to say something comforting, but only managed to splutter out, “Y-you said you could make me _purr_ , oh my god.”

“You said you learnt Chinese so you could talk to me,” Marinette huffed, pulling slightly away from him in her embarrassment.

“I thought it would give us something in common!” Adrien exclaimed helplessly, throwing his hands up in the air.

She looked solemnly at him for a moment and said, “We have more in common than we thought, I guess.”

The atmosphere between them shifted, filled with a tension that wasn’t there before, both of them being more bashful and brazen than they dared to be before. They knew each other’s secret, and that changed everything. She had never made Chat Noir _blush_ \- except, all the times she had made Adrien blush were suddenly coming back to her.

Since when had Chat Noir’s hand wrapped around her knife hand? “Riddle me this, Ladybug,” he whispered in her ear, their cheeks mashed together. “Does Ladybug actually have a crush on Chat Noir, or is she just a flirty person? I never really figured that out.”

Her breath caught at his nearness and at the warmth of his breath on her skin. Still, she managed to respond in an equally quiet voice, “Have you ever seen me flirt with anyone else, Chat Noir? It’s only ever been you.”

“I could say the same for you,” he whispered, lips barely moving. The wind snagged his voice and tugged it away into the night, but she could read his meaning in his eyes.

Marinette gazed into them as she reached forward and pulled off his mask. His eyes fluttered shut as she pulled away the black fabric, holding her breath. When they opened again, it was Adrien staring back at her. Marinette let her breath go in a small, delighted sigh.

Adrien lifted a hand to her mask, but he hesitated for a moment, index finger tracing along her cheekbone. “I feel like I’m going to start acting like an idiot if I take this off,” he admitted sheepishly.

Marinette giggled. She covered his hands with her own and guided the mask from her face, breaking eye contact only when the mask got in the way. “It’s just me, Adrien. Besides, I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would make you seem like an idiot in my eyes,” she told him with a smile.

He shrugged and grinned in a playfully self-deprecating way. “Well, I did ask out a girl I knew was going to murder me,” he pointed out. Absently he reached forward to brush away some of the pink spirit gum she’d used to hold her mask in place.

Marinette would have fallen to pieces if Chat Noir touched her like this, but knowing it was Adrien made the graze over her skin… comforting. She smiled and leaned into the touch. “Well, she’s going to make it up to you.”

Adrien lifted a brow with the familiar, fond exasperation that Chat Noir always had with Ladybug. “I’m eager to see what she has in mind,” he breathed, as she rested her forehead against his.

“I’m sure Chloe will appreciate that baking session she wanted with Ladybug,” Marinette offered, “especially if her good friend Adrien will be there.”

“Wait, really?” he asked. She gave a slight nod, and he beamed at her. “Well then, my lady -” she blushed - “how do you think we should go about this?”

He was probably only referring to their culinary excursion, but Marinette paused to interlace their fingers. “Together,” she told him with a smile.

(And also, not on this ridiculously cold roof.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> This work was produced as part of a Project Miraculous Ladybug effort. In addition, we would like to thank the following beta readers for making the fic possible: @altoblt5, @mimosaeyes, @667-darkavenue, @megatraven and @soundofez.


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